


Let the Eruption Take You (The Just Us Girls Remix)

by SegaBarrett



Category: The Handmaid's Tale (TV)
Genre: F/F, References to Canon Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 17:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15890700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Serena didn't plan for any of it to be like this.





	Let the Eruption Take You (The Just Us Girls Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Netgirl_y2k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Better Not Wake The Baby](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15394065) by [Netgirl_y2k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k). 



> Disclaimer: I do not own The Handmaid's Tale, and I make no money from this.

Serena used to love writing. She’d fill journals, up late at night, turning on the lamp after she heard her parents go into their bedroom and shut the door.  
They were early risers, and as such would shut themselves up inside the bedroom by eight o’clock on the dot. Then, Serena only risked being too loud and causing her father to knock on the door or open it, telling her to quit fooling around and get back into bed.

Neither her mother or father had much time for Serena to be fooling around. 

Her mother was not a traditional mother, at least not the way Serena had pictured it. She never returned from school to find her with an apron on, cooking and smiling.

There were papers strewn on a desk and a TV dinner in the oven, and Serena’s parents screaming at each other in the kitchen.

She would clasp her hands over her ears and repeat words to herself, words she wasn’t sure had any meaning, making up songs, writing. Writing the same words over and over again, a mantra. An escape.

***

She was a teenager the first time she had caught a glimpse of Fred. Perfectly poised and proper, every hair and button in place. He even had a beard already, which made him look a good ten years older than any of the other high school boys.

Serena joked that he could be their chaperone if they needed extra on a school trip. No one laughed, though.

“I think he’s a little creepy, personally,” one of the other girls told her. The other good Christian girls, the ones Serena tried to spend time with, even as she watched the bad girls with their leather jackets and tattoos run from locker to locker as if life was a James Dean film. 

She wished that a man would look at her, that he would lean in and ask her… ask her what, exactly? All the fairy tales she had grown up reading seemed so boring; a princess simply waiting to become one, to be whisked away by a prince who always seemed dumber than a box of rocks. If Cinderella had been smarter than her stepmother, hell, if Snow White had been smarter than her stepmother, the whole thing could have been avoided a long time ago. 

“What’s your name?”

She had been lost in thought, not paying attention. 

“Serena Joy,” she said, hurriedly, trying not to second-guess herself. She always went by it, first and middle, as if it belonged together. It did have this nice ring to it, soft and sweet, like a tulip or a daisy.

“I’m Fred,” the boy offered. He leaned forward and coughed into his hand. “Sorry. I get choked up when I see a beautiful woman.”

It was so corny that she wanted to slap him, but she didn’t. 

She felt like a bird, preening. Maybe a swan. She was writing the end to her own fairy tale, after all.

***

Gilead was going to be a heaven on Earth. She felt giddy thinking about it. Everyone would have their own roles; no one would be confused.

And the guilty would be punished, and punished, and punished over again. She only wished her mother could live to see it. Her face still stung sometimes when she thought about the night she had told her she was leaving for good to write a book. To go on a book tour, to be interviewed on CNN and to smile and convince people.

They never wanted to hear what she had to say, anyway. Every time she had begun to speak, someone had been there to cut her off, to tell her everything she had to say was offensive before she had even finished saying it.

She bristled even thinking about it – no more, no more. Now, they would listen, because they would have to.

Fred promised her. She had made him promise her.

***

Broken, broken, broken. She could hear the drip of the faucet and it sounded like those words over and over again, reminding her that she could be on a million news shows but there was one thing she would always be denied.

And then she had it, would have it, it was within her reach, her fingers – hah, that was a phrase she was never going to want to use again.

She had called the baby Nicole, and she had been tiny and perfect in every way (“ten perfect little fingers, ten perfect little toes” another one Serena would scream “well fuck you then” in her head at if she ever heard again, maybe out loud, maybe she was just done…) and now Offred, June, whatever the hell her name was, she was going to take her away and leave her with nothing left but emptiness and blood and Fred Waterford.

“June, please,” Serena managed to whisper, finally, out of breath, panting and crying, sweat coating her face and making smudge-lines, marking the beauty that she knew was there but she wasn’t supposed to have anymore. Hell of a lot of good it had done her in the end. “Take me with you.”

***

Canada was cold and frigid and icy, and Serena imagined her hand turning into liquid nitrogen and shattering every time she opened the door. She hated it.

But this was where Nicole was. Or Holly. Usually they just called her “the baby”, if they even talked at all.

When June slept, she always said Hannah’s name, never Luke’s or Nick’s. 

Sometimes Serena was sure she heard her own name, hurried and frightened, like she was in danger from some force within June’s brain, but that had to be wrong. They had been thrown together by chance, after all, and there was no way in hell June would save her from the Loch Ness Monster or the devil or anything else that fate might throw their way. 

Serena rarely dreamed, but when she did she had all ten fingers, manicured in a perfect row, curled into a fist that was holding fresh cut and fresh crushed flowers, sprinkling them over Nicole’s crib and watching as they fell on her tiny, shut eyes.

She still wasn’t sure if Nicole was sleeping or dead in these dreams. Perhaps she was going to sleep as Nicole and awaking as Holly, or maybe it was the other way around.

She didn’t yell out when she awoke. That was not her way. 

She would write, though, even when holding a pen burned.

Especially when it burned.

***

They moved to Hawaii, offer a chance by the last of America, and they found Hannah. She was a quiet little girl, and Serena didn’t really trust her. She felt as if she was always looking at her with big brown eyes, like she knew everything that went through Serena’s head and was a step away from opening her mouth and accusing her.

Instead, she called her “Miss Serena” as many times as Serena corrected her and asked her to call her Mother. June could be Mom, but Serena didn’t want Nicole to be confused, didn’t want her to ask questions. There were already too many questions that didn’t have answers. 

Hannah would sit in the room she shared with Nicole and cross her legs, looking back and forth like she was trying to put pieces of a puzzle together. Serena wished that she could just explain it all and tell her to shut up about it, that that was the way things were and the way they would always be for a lot of people.

That it had seemed like a good idea for another Serena, one that she can’t find when she looks in the mirror.

One who thought she had it all figured out in charts and notations. 

Sometimes she drove herself crazy thinking that June loved Hannah more than Nicole, because Hannah had come first, before Gilead. Because she had been pure and unspoiled and not wrapped up in all of this madness.

Serena knew that Nicole was not Fred’s child; hell, she had even planned it to be that way. If she had been, would the disconnect in her head be even worse?

For she loved little Nicole yet had no relation to her.

That was, Serena reminded herself, if she had figured out what love really meant.

***

Nicole was five when she walked up to Serena and asked her, “What’s a Handmaid?”

Serena’s first impulse was to run to Hannah, to shake her, to threaten to throw her out if she ever spoke of the past to Nicole again.

But maybe it hadn’t been Hannah who had told her. It could have been June, after all. And if she forbade talk of Gilead then perhaps Hannah would speak of other things – the hurried touches in the hallway between June and Serena, the kisses when they thought that no one was watching them. The shadows on the wall of the two women doing a dance that neither ever spoke about in the daylight hours.

Serena sighed and looked down at her.

“Something we don’t have anymore, honey. Don’t worry about it.” She patted her on the head a moment, then pulled her up into her arms and held her close. “Nothing is ever going to get you, and there is nothing that will ever take us away from you.”

“Nothing?” Her eyes were wide, trusting.

“Nothing.”

When they walked out of the bedroom, June was sitting next to Hannah at the dinner table. Serena thought of the old shows where sisters would draw a line down the middle of their shared room. 

“Hey, Serena,” June said to her. “I was thinking of ordering in. Hawaiian pizza, maybe. It’s been a while.”

Serena shook her head.

“No… I think I’ll cook.”


End file.
